15-Segment FV865ND VFD controlled by HT16515

FV865ND is a VFD panel manufactured by Futaba Corporation. It is designed to be used in DVD players or set-top-boxes. It can display 8 characters and it has a lot of symbols. I found it in a DVB-S2 receiver (Comag SL100HD) where it was controlled by HT16515 IC. Fortunately, the front panel of this receiver contains everything needed to power the VFD (the power is supplied via a 5V line and it is converted to filament and VFD voltage by a small transformer).

I couldn't find any software for HT16515 but its datasheet is available. The IC is 3.3V and 5V compatible and the nice thing is that the panel connector has different pins for IC supply and VFD transformer. The IC supports key scan too and the front panel makes use of only 7 keys (maximum 32). Data is sent/received via serial interface, SPI like.

I wrote an Arduino compatible library to control this front panel. The symbols on the left side of the VFD are multiplexed with segments and are not supported in the current version of the library. Here is an example sketch that displays on VFD the key that is pressed.

Like other display libraries I wrote, this one has functions to initialize, turn on and set intensity of display; functions that manipulate the local display data buffer and a function that sends data to controller; a function that reads key mask.

Here are the segment assignments.

HT16515 FV865ND segment assignments

Below are panel photos and pinout.

Comag SL100HD front panel (HT16515 and FV865ND)

Comag SL100HD front panel (HT16515 and FV865ND)

Comag SL100HD front panel pinout

The receiver main board has some markings on it but they don't seem to be for this panel (the board can be programmed to be compatible with other type of panels).

You can get the datasheet and my Arduino compatible library from GitHub.